By now even the unrepentant Paul Jankas of the world know that One if by Land, Two if by Sea is widely regarded as the most romantic restaurant in the city. Normally we’d hesitate to match a cheesy holiday with a played-out restaurant, but now that new chef Craig Hopson, formerly of Picholine, has replaced the humdrum chicken Kiev with entrées such as turbot poached in coconut milk with peeky toe crab, mango and sea beans (you can peruse the new menu here), we don’t feel the least bit corny about asking Michael Lombardozi, a waiter at the West Village institution for seven years, to walk us down lovers’ lane.
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Though we are longtime fans of chef Craig Hopson and expect great things from his tenure at One If by Land, Two If by Sea, we’ve still never had dinner there. It’s too expensive, too romantic, too much pressure — it’s Valentine’s Day every night there! The restaurant has remedied this with a bar menu, so you can now sample Hopson’s work in a (relatively) casual setting. We were happy to see that his frog-leg beignets, long a favorite of ours at Picholine, had made the leap, so to speak, to the new restaurant. The full bar menu is below.
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The Board of Health decided yesterday in a unanimous vote to make all chain restaurants with fifteen or more outlets – approximately 10 percent of the city’s restaurants – post calorie info on their menus starting March 31. RIP, 1,230-calorie triple Whopper with cheese. [CNN]
Laboratory tests run on sushi samples from twenty Manhattan stores and restaurants revealed shockingly high levels of mercury in bluefin tuna, so high that the FDA could technically take the fish off the market. And if you’ve got to have your tuna sushi, you’d best head to Fairway and avoid Blue Ribbon Sushi at all costs. [NYT]
Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl is “obsessed with” Momofuku Ssäm Bar, “like everyone else in New York,” according to her. [TONY]

The best steaks at Primehouse NY are good enough to earn a single star from Frank Bruni — which is saying something, given that he had problems with service, didn't like the other entrées, and even found the rib eyes to be less than they ought to be. But the Creekstone strips carried the day, as they always do. [NYT]
The small, porky tapas at Jason Neroni's Cantina seem to impress Robert Sietsema, but his review leaves you with the sense that, croquettes aside, the place is still a work-in-progress. [VV]
Paul Adams dines at Smith's and praises the rich, possibly too rich, appetizers, while frowning over some of the mains. But on the whole he likes the place: “Some dishes are excessive by design, others poorly executed in the heat of the dinner rush, and a few, like the pasta, remarkably good and worthy of a return visit — perhaps after the first wave of crowds has moved on.” [NYS]

If there’s one thing you can count on Gael Greene to deliver, it’s tales of seduction by food — and her latest post has it in spades. This time, it’s from the male point of view, as Gael offers a “service feature on seduction,” courtesy of her friend Francesco, “the teflon Romeo, in and out of love constantly, an outright chauvinist pig, in fact, but as a pal, really fun, full of zest and unfailingly loyal.” Francesco’s advice includes the following helpful tips:

A list of the most haunted New York destinations compiled by Internet librarians features a lot of restaurants, including Bridge Cafe whose six-foot-tall, female bouncer, Gallus Magg, used to bite ears off drunken customers back in the nineteenth century; and One if by Land, Two if by Sea, which boasts the spirit of former building owner Aaron Burr — not to mention his daughter, who nowadays "bothers ladies who lunch by pulling their earrings." [NYP]
Market Table is the latest restaurant to only accept strategic reservations, and it's annoying when you see empty tables. [Bottomless Dish/Citysearch]
The New York branches of Muji won't have the cafés selling the delectable green-tea pastries you find at the Toyko flagship, but the new Amai Tea & Bake, at 171 Third Avenue, sells similar ones, along with viennoisserie and white-tea cookies. [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]